Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Nymrohd]

The thread should have been retired literally an expansion ago instead of just continually shifted into the next cycle, it breaks delineation and encourages a more general discussion instead of narrowed speculation, but there's also basically nothing to be speculated on until we are close enough to march to potentially get actual 12.0.5 stuff.

I think it makes sense due to the unique situation with the Saga to keep it all in one thread. We should have a new one for 14.0 for sure because we will have leak season again.

[Hitei]

I'm not arguing that early WoW writing was cleaner or more coherent. It clearly had flaws. My point is that those flaws existed alongside a setting people were deeply invested in, which is why engagement stayed high despite the "messiness"

"It was also bad before" doesn't explain why fewer people care now. Whatever TBC or Wrath did wrong, players still followed the story, enjoyed the setting, and were deeply attached to their faction of choice. Because of that, they kept buying in.

Spoiler: 

They didn't though. You are completely misattributing the game's general success in Vanilla and TBC (which were the actual growth expansions, despite being the "high point" wrath is when the people leaving the game caught up with the people joining and the game leveled off) with "people must have been invested in the setting". The average player was not invested in the setting at all. They were not reading quests. Actually knowing the lore was a complete rarity. It's why places like Scrolls of Lore existed and why it was a tiny site.

99.99% of players, without exaggeration, were not paying attention to any story. Which is exactly how Blizzard got away with completely destroying the setting over and over. Look at how much people bitched and moaned about "sci-fi" and not feeling "Like Warcraft" and then look at the garbage in TK, Outland forge camps, or the Draenei starting zone, or felreavers.

Their eyes glazed over and they went and killed 12 of whatever mob and skimmed the text to see what they needed to click. They watch the pretty cutscenes and guess vaguely at what is happening.

The only difference is now they have Nobbel explaining in a summary video what is happening before a patch or expansion and they have asmongold or bellular whining about whatever dumb shit is the latest controversial game happening so they get all up in arms about shit they were never going to pay any attention to in the first place. Which is why you have people thinking BfA was a bad war story when MoP couldn't manage to keep its own message straight for a single zone and was destroying characterizations left and right.

Early WoW had tonal chaos, yes, but it also had clear faction identity, clear conflict stakes, and a cynical, mythic, often cruel worldview. Characters and factions pursued their own interests, often at the detriment of others around them.

What is the faction identity of the Horde in Vanilla into BC?

Is it completely peaceful Tauren who are on extremely good terms with the Night Elves?
Is it the Warsong who are literally in a death war with them?
Is it Thrall who is somehow simultaneously on good terms with Jaina of the Alliance but also just okay'ing the war with the sentinels?
Is it the Forsaken doing fucked up experiments without a care and starting conflicts with everyone around them
Is it the Blood Elves who have nothing to do with any of those groups and just 20 years prior were fighting off many of those same orcs while they were helping Zul'jin march against the walls of the capital?

The "clear faction identity" was "blue human dwarf elf guys" and "red monster evil guys" which isn't even a coherent read of either of those factions, because again, the average player was not invested in or following the story, so you had a bunch of dumb Horde players yelling "For the Horde!" and thinking their faction was about smashy smashing stuff without any degree of understanding about what Thrall's actual deal was and a bunch of dumb Alliance players running around named "legolas" and drizzt because their understanding went as far as "elves".

Characters did pursue their own interests at other detriment, because the story was so poorly written that they could defy all logic and do so. See: the absolute pants on head situation that was Thrall helping the goblins fight against their tyrannical overlord Gallywix on the islands and then going "okay I guess you can be in charge of them, but like don't do anything bad anymore"; or how the Forsaken are just all over the place because the game wanted you to pretend they have some sort of "humans are treating us bad" thing happening while they were just doing outright supervillain shit and being the aggressors all over their zones.

it's intentional smoothing. Faction identity has been eroded. Violence exists only if it's justified. Therapeutic dialogue and emotional consensus have replaced clashing ideals and moral ambiguity. That's a clear directional change, not just "bad writing again"

Retail's shift is that it actually tries to hold the narrative accountable to basic logic. What violence do you want? Forsaken to have teeth again? Cool. Now explain to me why the entire Alliance and half the Horde don't drop down on that rogue element and kick their teeth in. You want scamming greedy goblins? Sure. Now why the hell would the Horde ever work with those ones over the reliable trustworthy ones and not just kill the people ripping them off?

Having the Horde attack the Alliance in the middle of Icecrown (glacier) worked in Wrath bceuase Blizzard just went "the Alliance just let it slide, i dunno lol"
Having Garrosh belittle Sylvanas worked in Cata because Blizzard went "Nah, she doesn't just completely wipe out the Orcs and raise them all because like... Thrall the guy she met a couple times said Garrosh should be allowed to command her."
Having a cynical worldview like the Forsaken struggling for a place in the world only works when you just don't acknowledge the elephant in the room where the Argents are totally okay with recruiting friendly undead and every neutral faction in the game is fine with forsaken players, just like Orcs being resource starved only works when you pretend druids aren't a thing and the Tauren don't have a vast fertile plains down the road.



This smoothing isn't contrived posturing it is realism. When you actually treat characters as individuals and allow people or groups to operate with agency isntead of as archetypical cutouts, you end up trending towards cohesion. This is the reason that we are on a forum with people from all across the entire world who are all speaking English and are all playing the same game based on a prevailing and pervasive idea of what fantasy settings look like. And why everyone here has more or less the same ideas about whether it is okay to just stab a random person on the street and take their stuff, or kick pets in the head. If you have a body with power (see: the Alliance) then that body establishes morality and it has no reason to tolerate dissent (see: the thousands and thousands and thousands of enemies you have killed because they stood against the Alliance and Horde).

It's not that "everyone" is friends with Anduin and wants to help him build a sandcastle. It's that anyone who wants to kick that sandcastle down is asking for one of two world powers to break down their door, and the other world power, who is the only persistent group that could reasonably dissent, has to somehow justify also not having its door kicked down.

I think it makes sense due to the unique situation with the Saga to keep it all in one thread. We should have a new one for 14.0 for sure because we will have leak season again.

I mean this isn't even really a Saga thread, it was like a weird "patch speculation" fork of the Dragonflight speculation thread after Aucald closed the 10.0 spec thread.

[Luck4]

Roadmap this week maybe? Also I am wondering if we will get a cinematic in the pre patch and a launch cinematic aswell.

Since nothing is hinting at an animated short, I wouldn't be surprised if the release cinematic got cut as well.

[Sondrelk]

The core issue with the story in WoW is, and always will be, that it's a split faction MMO with constant updates.
Because of this factions will need to stay more or less constant to prevent players from suddenly being on a different faction, or potentially dead our outcast. This in turn has knock-on effect to the story as a whole, where faction stories inevitably have to return to the status quo. Rendering any forward momentum on them more or less meaningless.

On the broader story front, the need for constant updates means the story will inevitably need to have a climax that we will then continue onwards from. Said continuation inevitably needing it's own escalation.
The story will eventually run out of credible threats, which needs constant new updates on new villains to future new stories. All of whom will require a slice of the story pie.

The way the story unfolds in small chunks 7-8 weeks apart also means you constantly lose momentum for the plot, which then needs to either move at mach speed to get everything done in the tiny bit of alloted time. Or at a snails pace, as the story drags on with scraps of momentum for months or even years.

[Jaggler]

The way the story unfolds in small chunks 7-8 weeks apart also means you constantly lose momentum for the plot, which then needs to either move at mach speed to get everything done in the tiny bit of alloted time. Or at a snails pace, as the story drags on with scraps of momentum for months or even years.

Tbh, it would help, if they would use the in between patches, to actually further the story, 11.1 to 11.2 was especially bad in this regard, with 11.1.5 and 11.1.7 basically doing nothing to lead from Undermine to K'aresh. They basically just threw in some random unrelated events.

Imagine if we could just have 11.1.5 finding out about what the Ethereals plan to do with the Dark Heart and set up Xal'atath as Dimensius' Silver Surfer and 11.1.7 dealing with setting up Tazavesh for transport from the Shadowlands to K'aresh.

Instead we got random Nerubian assaults, a questline in Arathi Highlands and Dastardly Duos lol.

I'm think part of the problem was the fact that K'aresh wasn't planned for TWW initially, considering they managed to at least do some some setting up for Undermine in 11.0.7.

[Sondrelk]

Tbh, it would help, if they would use the in between patches, to actually further the story, 11.1 to 11.2 was especially bad in this regard, with 11.1.5 and 11.1.7 basically doing nothing to lead from Undermine to K'aresh. They basically just threw in some random unrelated events.

Imagine if we could just have 11.1.5 finding out about what the Ethereals plan to do with the Dark Heart and set up Xal'atath as Dimensius' Silver Surfer and 11.1.7 dealing with setting up Tazavesh for transport from the Shadowlands to K'aresh.

Instead we got random Nerubian assaults, a questline in Arathi Highlands and Dastardly Duos lol.

I'm think part of the problem was the fact that K'aresh wasn't planned for TWW initially, considering they managed to at least do some some setting up for Undermine in 11.0.7.

If anything, 11.1.7 shows precisely why an MMO is a terrible medium. You simply cannot waste even a single opportunity. Usually it's because of a story that didnt quite land, meaning you need to spend several to rectify it. Or in the case of 11.1.7, which in hidnsight looks more like the ideas bucket than anything planned.

[Jaggler]

If anything, 11.1.7 shows precisely why an MMO is a terrible medium. You simply cannot waste even a single opportunity. Usually it's because of a story that didnt quite land, meaning you need to spend several to rectify it. Or in the case of 11.1.7, which in hidnsight looks more like the ideas bucket than anything planned.

Yeah, I don't disagree with you. They basically committed to this huge saga, spanning three expansions and for some reason, about one year in, they decided "you know what, we will just press pause on the whole thing and do random, unrelated stuff".

[Skildar]

With the emergence of gacha games following the steps of Genshin Impact (ZZZ, WuWa, etc.) you can find a lot of games out there with tighter schedule that makes great narrative stories every 12 weeks at worst (usually it's every 7) while delivering sidequests as well. Contrary to World of Warcraft, every sentence in the main quest is dubbed, meaning it's planned correctly to be delivered with care. Add to that, the camera work, character animation and special effects, WoW feels immensely cheap and run by exhausted and directionless teams.

The schedule goal isn't bad it's unfortunately the development teams that are poorly effective. Let it be the direction, the organisation or skill sharing, etc. I don't really care who's to blame, the end result should be way better than what we are fed. You've referenced 11.1.7, it is indeed a dire example of a badly written story thrown into the care of a team that you can feel either didn't have the experience to handle this or which wasn't given the time (could very well be both).

[Throwawayx]

They didn't though. You are completely misattributing the game's general success in Vanilla and TBC (which were the actual growth expansions, despite being the "high point" wrath is when the people leaving the game caught up with the people joining and the game leveled off) with "people must have been invested in the setting". The average player was not invested in the setting at all. They were not reading quests. Actually knowing the lore was a complete rarity. It's why places like Scrolls of Lore existed and why it was a tiny site.

"Players never engaged with the story, therefore engagement doesn't matter" is a weak premise. You're conflating lore literacy with emotional and contextual engagement, and those are not the same.

I'm not claiming that the average Vanilla or TBC player was reading every quest or could explain the geopolitical nuances of Azeroth. Of course they weren't. But engagement doesn't require a deep understanding of the lore. It requires that the world feels charged: factions feel distinct, and that actions feel like they exist within a hostile, unstable setting. Early WoW had that in spades.

People didn't need to read Scrolls of Lore to feel or understand that Ashenvale was contested, that the Forsaken were unsettling, or that the Horde and Alliance did not belong together. Those things were communicated through environment, quest framing, NPC behavior and dialogue, and persistent conflict. That's engagement at the level most players interact with the game. Saying "they weren't invested because they skimmed quests" misses the point. Most players still identified strongly with their faction and they felt hostility or pride during PvP encounters. Above all, they understood that the world was harsh, unfair and often morally ugly.

That's why "For the Horde" and "For the Alliance" meant something beyond team colors, even if those meanings were simplified or contradictory at times. Ambiguity or inconsistency don't negate engagement - they often fuel it.

The Horde being internally contradictory - the spiritual Tauren, the nihilistic Forsaken, the honor-bound Orcs, the pragmatic Blood Elves - wasn't a failure of identity, it was a fractured coalition held together by necessity, each with their own internal dynamics. That tension is what made it interesting (you started with neutral reps with every other faction if you rolled Forsaken, reinforcing that sense of alienation). The same was true for the Alliance, whose moral self-image often clashed with its actions. Retail didn't "fix" that by adding realism - it "resolved" it by removing friction.

What you're calling "narrative accountability" often just means pre-emptively sanding down any conflict that would logically escalate. Instead of letting factions fracture, betray or radicalize and then dealing with the consequences, the story now pre-justifies violence so no one is morally uncomfortable. Rogue elements are rapidly reintegrated or dealt with to preserve the "harmony" and moral disagreement is treated as a misunderstanding or ignorance to be therapized. That's not realism, that's risk aversion.

Realism doesn't require cohesion, it requires believable consequences, including instability, inertia, and unresolved power struggles. Warcraft used to let consequences be ugly, unfair and unresolved - even when that implicated the player's faction or race. Now, it rushes to consensus because the story is no longer willing to let the world feel dangerous, unfair or messy in ways that might reflect badly on the player.

You ask "why wouldn't the Alliance crush dissent immediately?". The answer used to be because they couldn't, wouldn't or didn't agree (SoO ending, Varian vs Jaina). Political inertia, internal fracture, and competing priorities and interests are all realistic forces. The story now simply chooses not to use them. Instead, power blocs and characters behave like perfectly coordinated moral enforcers, which ironically makes the world feel a lot less believable. Conflict feels artificial because there are no winners / losers or real consequences and everything is framed as a misunderstanding to be resolved through dialogue.

This is where engagement drops. When everything is explainable, resolvable, and emotionally validated, there's nothing left to argue about, fight over, or fear. It’s a deliberate tonal and structural shift toward safe, consensus-driven storytelling - and that's boring.

[huth]

You can't compare a single player game that has consistent storytelling with a multiplayer game where they struggle to choose which character is going to have written lines every patch.

Sure, but this thread is about WarCraft, not about that game.

[Scyth]

None of this is new knowledge but I've been going over all the questing/renown gear in Midnight and it's so well done. In particular I'm in love with the Plate/Cloth Belf armour and all the colour options.

Weapons too, the 2H Sword and Shield are amazing.
Blood/Void Elves are eating good!

[Sondrelk]

None of this is new knowledge but I've been going over all the questing/renown gear in Midnight and it's so well done. In particular I'm in love with the Plate/Cloth Belf armour and all the colour options.

Weapons too, the 2H Sword and Shield are amazing.
Blood/Void Elves are eating good!

Its nice to see that the questing and dungeon sets are finally starting to become proper newer quality sets. Still not as good as raid or other endgame sets, but nice nonetheless.

(Shame the plate designers didn't get the memo)

- - - Updated - - -

Weapons are definitely great. And lovely to see that Arators sword is there, proving that the designers do know what a normal two handed sword looks like.
And the dagger from the Phoenix boss as well. Definitely making something cool with that.

[Bozzoltank]

Oh shit, a What's Next thing for World of Warcraft is coming out January 29th!

[extasy]

Oh shit, a What's Next thing for World of Warcraft is coming out January 29th!

What would they even show there? i feel like its for classic+

[Dracullus]

What would they even show there? i feel like its for classic+

Roadmaps for Modern and Classic, it's on their page.

[extasy]

Roadmaps for Modern and Classic, it's on their page.

Oh nice, was looking forward to seeing roadmap for retail.

[Reive]

"the state of azeroth"

oh the irony lol

[GeometryWizard]

The realism = absolute world peace argument has lost all weight when the geopolitics of the real world is in its most unstable and dangerous state in like half a century. Orcs waging war with night elves for natural resources located directly on their borders is more realistic than every nation being led by selfless altruists with zero corruption in their ranks or rooting out corruption immediately if found, that have zero ambition being living in a nebulous eternal peace because their nations are all perfectly stable and have no desires or wants or needs or anything since the entire populace is in total compliance and agreement with the leader. WoW hasn't gotten more realistic it's more like the writers are trying to fulfill the End of History's thesis after it totally failed in predicting what the modern real world would become

The one exception to this trend has been the Red Dawn story and that completely undercuts anything interesting happening by just making the Red Dawn actually responsible for all the initial famine and supply issues to begin with so it's a completely closed system where getting rid of them solves all the problems. Except they didn't even get rid of them because Danath twice in a row lets the leader of an armed revolt that have robbed and killed scores of Stromgarde civilians live

"But killing Marran will make her a martyr" only makes sense if Danath is supposed to be an incredibly weak leader that has no real popular support among the people and they're all itching for an excuse to revolt against him. Everything the player sees in the story tells you that Danath is weak and ineffective and has no control over his people but since he represents the status quo the story must make him correct and live

Similar to the Red Dawn are the Scarlets who are apparently getting so many new recruits they can reform and rebuild into a sizeable force enough to reconquer large swathes of land even in Forsaken territory every other year so you have to wonder how bad is life in the human kingdoms if joining the Scarlets is so constantly appealing. If that many people want to jump on the warmongering human supremacist bandwagon that has a track record of like 0-10 wins in the last 2 decades you'd expect to see way more unrest and dissent in places like Stormwind. If the factions are such scary omnipresent superpower hiveminds why aren't the Horde helping the Forsaken deal with such massive Scarlet presences lingering outside their capital city for years

It's basically just like Super Dickmann said in his post a few pages ago. The story goes against almost any logical conclusion you can draw so there's no real point in getting invested anymore. Midnight's story has nothing to show about the void having any uniquely positive aspects it's just pure evil and chaos. Alleria's entire stated character motivation is "only I can stop Xal'atath because I too can use the void" but the single victory she scores against her is hitting her with an arrow once and the entire rest of TWW and Midnight is Alleria being useless against Xal'atath or her void powers actively being a hindrance. Despite all this the story still ends with a feel good moment about all the cosmic powers coming together to save the Sunwell and Rommath and Umbric getting along again even though everything Umbric has done and represents has been destruction and chaos. The only reason the Sunwell is corrupted is because years ago a shadow priest sought her out for power. If the story was "realistic" they might as well exile or cut down the void elves as they've done nothing to actually help against problems they haven't created themselves

Same deal with the Fourth War. The Alliance and Horde should have renewed hatred and distrust for decades but instead they completely bury the hatchet offscreen. Every single story is predictable AKA boring now because you know it will always end in making friendship and peace no matter if the narrative leading up to it doesn't support that conclusion at all. When you know every single character will act the same and every conflict will be immediately downplayed so absolutely nothing long-lasting or lingering comes out of it that might affect the feelgood happy peace vibes then it becomes pointless to care about stuff like the Light vs. Void conflict because you know it will have zero long-lasting effects on the setting

But really despite me typing all that as someone who still wants to care it ultimately won't matter since it looks like we're entering another Shadowlands where the gameplay dev's hubris got so massive they're ruining the gameplay and the writers can deflect all criticism internally by blaming the gameplay for the game's woes and nothing will change. There's a reason why 90% of Midnight's advertising is housing

The last thing I want to say is that claiming nothing about the writing has changed is not only completely absurd but you'd probably offend people like Metzen even saying that who has tried to talk about how he's changed. There are running book series by a single author that have noticeably changed in tone or subject matter over a few years and you think a multi-billion dollar corporate IP that has had probably hundreds of writers working on it over three decades, with huge creative leadership turnover between 2016-2019 with the staff talking about how much they changed how they work around that time too, and you think it hasn't changed at all? It's such a lazy defense

[Joshuaj]

Roadmap reveal on the 29th

- - - Updated - - -

The day after my birthday!

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Happy to see a Roadmap announcement so soon, thought I had to wait until Post Release for anything.

I don't vibe with the "Warcraft IP has no value" argument, its' just a bit of a oversimplification of current issues on display at this point. There's valid points in it even if I find the shallow "But they copied contemporary media" argument to be silly considering the consistency of "copy of copy" argument in literature and beyond, Warcraft isn't the first franchise or piece of media that is wholly unoriginal and yet still relevant as a IP.